You’re bored of your crippled and branded firmware of your brand new Sony-Ericsson P990i, then read the following. The whole tutorial is based on my experience unbranding a P990i that came with a Orange swiss firmware.
The benefit of the unbranded firmware is that it’s more regularly updated from Sony-Ericsson and you can get rid of the ugly Orange logo.
Unfortunately I didn’t find a free solution. What I mean by free is free of charge and free of Windows ;-). The whole process cost you 6€ if you do it right. It’s a pity to pay for something that should come free with your phone but it’s at last not that expensive.
DISCLAIMER: Proceed at your own risk. I cannot be held responsible if you crash your mobile phone.
1. Download the KulanKendiClient
2. Install it on your Windows machine
3. Buy one (1) credit from SE On-Line Server here for 6€
4. Wait for some hours to receive your login information. The mail sender should be “gsminfo@home.pl” and no subject. Be careful the sender’s email seems to be catch by some spam filters
5. Start the KulanKendiClient and fill the login and password field with the one found in the mail
6. Ensure that your phone’s battery is fully charged
7. Backup any of your important data with the Sony-Ericsson software that came with your phone
8. In the option’s menu under config pane then other, call the “Format MS” application and in the same screen call the “General Initialization” application
9. Remove the battery of your phone and the simcard
10. Replace you phone’s battery
11. In KulanKendiClient check the box called “Change CDA” and then introduce in the corresponding text field CDA162007/1 (this correspond to world generic 1). Take a look there if you want to set an other CDA
12. Click on the flash phone’s button
13. Press and keep pressed your phone’s “C” button, then connect the USB cable to your phone
14. When KulanKendiClient display “phone connected” then release the “C” button of your phone
15. You should get a success message (at least I hope)
16. Disconnect your phone
17. Remove the battery, replace the simcard, put back the battery and start the phone
18. At this time in “More” menu under “State” at the bottom you should read under CDA two various numbers: the old CDA and the new one you just set
19. Ask the provided Sony-Ericsson software to update the firmware of your phone. You should be provided with World 1 Generic firmware.
20. Congratulation you now have and unbranded up-to-date firmware for your P990
21. Restore you old backup data from point 7
Now you’ve at least a temporary solution to use your p990 before you buy an iPhone 😉
